Bringing finance onchain.
A focused pre-seed and seed fund backing the missing layers of onchain finance — infrastructure, capital mobility, and universal UX, accelerated by AI.
Onchain. On purpose.
01 Thesis
The missing layers of onchain finance.
Not a degen fund. An institutional-grade, onchain-native one — writing first checks where finance is being rebuilt on programmable rails.
Infrastructure
The decentralized rails. Programmable financial infrastructure — the settlement, custody, and execution layers finance is rebuilding onchain.
Capital mobility
The global movement of value. Stablecoins, tokenized assets, and instant settlement moving capital without borders or banking hours.
Universal UX
User experiences so intuitive that adoption becomes inevitable. The layer that turns onchain finance from possible into unavoidable.
As securities tokenize and stablecoins become the settlement layer, markets run continuously — and continuous, instant-settlement markets make AI the dominant user. Not because crypto won, but because the structural constraint changed. Onchain inherits programmability; the geometry tightens.
Machines never sleep — 24/7 markets are coming, and it’s for the agents.
AI does not optimize half the week. It runs continuously.
02 Pete Townsend
“Twenty years in institutional finance, ten years in crypto. I've been at this intersection long enough to know when the timing is right.”
Originally from Boston — an MBA in Finance from Boston University’s Questrom School and a BS in Finance from UMass Amherst’s Isenberg School — Pete built his entire finance and crypto career in Dublin, Ireland, across nearly three decades in Ireland, the UK, Continental Europe and the US.
Two decades in institutional finance: BISYS in Bermuda, then BNP Paribas Securities Services in Dublin, where he was COO of Fund Services and Global Head of Product & Solutions for Hedge Fund Services — and Fidelity Investments. In his final year at BNP, his boss told him to “go out into the fintech space in Ireland and see if there's anything worth investing in.” He found it was worth investing in himself, and left in 2016.
Since then: advisor and angel to fintech and crypto startups; Chair (PCF-3) and Independent NED (PCF-2B) of Coinbase Ireland since 2019; Managing Director of the Techstars Web3 accelerator in Dublin (2021–2025) — 38 startups backed there, 40+ including angel deals, thousands of pitches reviewed — now MD Emeritus; and Founding GP of Norio Ventures.
Pete Townsend · Founding GP
UMass Amherst, Isenberg — BS, Finance
03 By the numbers
04 Track record
Selected investments.
Techstars Web3 Dublin cohort
05 Money Never Sleeps
The distribution machine — finally pointed at the fund.
Founded May 2018, solo-hosted by Pete since 2023. 300+ episodes across 9 seasons, recently relaunched to “one big idea in under 15 minutes.” Years of authority that lived off-domain, now compounding for Norio.
06 Writing
The Geometry of Fintech.
A structural series on why the constraint itself is changing — argued from geometry, not hype. Its throughline, financial gravity, borrows Eric Ries’s idea to pull four episodes into one argument.
07 Contact
Interested in what's next?
Building in onchain finance? Pete reads his own email. One founder, one fund, one clear ask — send the deck.
info@norioventures.com